


Warm

by draculard



Category: Girl Interrupted (1999)
Genre: Big fluffy sweaters, Eating Disorders, F/F, Fluff and Angst, Implied Sexual Content, Just some soft domestic stuff, Lisa and Susanna in a cabin, Some light blood and injuries of course
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-10
Updated: 2019-08-10
Packaged: 2020-08-14 14:37:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 482
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20193895
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/draculard/pseuds/draculard
Summary: Susanna never feels more peaceful than when she and Lisa are alone in that cabin in the woods.





	Warm

There’s dried blood, crusted and black, on the sleeve of her sweater. There’s dog fur, too  — thick red strands of it stuck in-between the wool fibers, impossible to get out. Susanna hasn’t seen a dog anywhere in this house; there aren’t even little clumps of shed fur on the floor. How long has it been since this sweater was washed?

She hooks a finger in the collar and lowers her chin, tucks her nose into the wool. The blood on the sleeve is hers; she wiped her nose on it earlier. The sweater smells like smoke from a woodstove. 

“Lisa?” she says, but Lisa is fast asleep, naked beneath a quilt her mother or grandmother must have made. There’s a clumsy pink patch on the edge of the blanket, newer than the rest, less faded, with wide stitches made by tiny, inexperienced hands. It’s hard to imagine Lisa sitting still long enough to sew a patch on a quilt. 

She remembers Lisa’s lips on her inner thigh, her ribs visible, shifting beneath her skin. Lisa’s fingers on her throat. Her back arching, her chest flushed, collar bones sticking out.

And then, when both of them were gasping too hard to see straight, Lisa’s forehead colliding with Susanna’s nose  — the crunch of cartilage and bones, the warm, wet deluge of blood coating her lips, her chin, dripping onto her breasts. 

Susanna’s nose is still swollen, still throbbing, but the blood has been wiped away. She was still in the bathroom, standing before the mirror and holding a wet rag to her nose, when Lisa fell asleep. She’d pulled the sweater from the closet as quietly as she could. It was the least moth-eaten item in the cabin, one of dozens of things abandoned by Lisa’s family the last time they vacationed there.

It’s an extra-large. It used to be white, but it’s gone grey with age. She imagines it belonged to Lisa’s grandfather, and that’s why it smells like woodsmoke and tobacco, but she doesn’t know for sure.

Sighing, Susanna sits on the edge of the bed, the sweater slipping off her shoulder. Her hand roves beneath the sheets until the warmth of Lisa’s skin burns her. She rests her hand on the small of Lisa’s back. She starts to rub small circles on Lisa’s back, but she can feel the knobs of Lisa’s spine protruding through her skin, and the feeling disturbs her, makes her go still.

“You need to eat more,” she whispers.

Lisa’s asleep. She doesn’t answer, but if she did, she’d probably say:  _ So do you. _

Susanna stares into the empty fireplace across from the bed. Nothing but long-cold ashes in there. It’s chilly in the bedroom, in the entire cabin, but so long as her hand is on Lisa’s back, she’s warm.

If she said _ I love you,  _ would Lisa say it back?

Susanna doesn’t want to know.


End file.
